VOTD 4/07/2023

 Olivier Messiaen: Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus (Argo) played by John Ogdon

Purchased at Jerry's Records

If you look back on the archives of this blog, you'll see much written about Messiaen. One of my lockdown projects was listening to every disc in a 32-CD brick of Messiaen's work, and write about each one. This piece has come up here before.

I don't often buy multiple recordings of the same piece. In this case it was, oh, another copy of the complete Vingt Regards, $3, sure. 

I wasn't thinking how this is Good Friday in the Christian/Catholic calendar, only that it was sitting there waiting for me to spin it.

This work (1944) is in the middle of his "golden period" as I would put it, 1940-1950. It's a time of unbridled imagination and maturity in this work. It's the period of Quartet for the End of Time, Harawi, Visions de l'Amen, Quatre Études de Rhythme, and most importantly (to me) Turangalîla-symphonie. I've decided that latter is my favorite work of symphonic music of all time. 

Most movements of this piece is a "regard", a view or consideration, of the Christ child. Some of it I get, there's a majesty or awe in first movement ("view of the father") that I can see the inspiration. Others, not so much, but I don't especially care. I don't mean that disrespectfully. I hear techniques, repeated themes, and I love the music without concern for whether each is a "regard" for this or that.

The complete work takes about two hours to perform. It's a lot of music. It's a lot of music to fit on each side of a vinyl LP. Maybe that's one reason the background noise on this release seems unusually high. I can handle it, but it's noticeable in quiet passages.

Do I notice differences between this and other performances I've heard? I am not usually very picky about such things, unless there's something noticeably wrong. The first thing of performances of this piece for me is whether the pianist plays the first movement slowly enough. Ogdon plays at just the right pace, I'd say.

I've said before, if more church music sounded like Messiaen, maybe I'd attend once in a while. I'm not saying I'd believe the dogma any more, but at least I'd fill a seat.